Felix and I | Hacker News Reader

Felix and I

jacobfilipp.com

107 pointssurprisetalk39 comments

For anyone reading this story as a cautionary tale on having children, you should know that this is not my lived experience of parenting (or the described experience of many of my peers). The way he describes it is the exact opposite of my experience:

> "if you feed me a BIG tablespoon of shit every day and then switch to just a little teaspoon daily, I won’t suddenly start liking the taste of shit."

I genuinely love time spent with my child. I had a similar experience to him and Felix in my 20s and am glad I did, but I'd never want to go back there. That was right for me then and I deeply feel that parenting (alongside a software engineering career I love) is the most joyful, rewarding place to be in my 30s.

Yeah, I found that quote utterly weird. At 50 I acquired a child and stepchild. I've never felt remotely the love I do for my kid. Not even when I was a child, for my parents. Nothing comes close to the utter joy of holding him tight.

As someone who now identifies first and foremost as a father, it baffles me every time I meet a man who has means and intelligence but managed to end up a resentful parent. It's not that I can't understand the many reasons a person would not want to have children, but I find it very difficult to understand how a capable person can fail to avoid this scenario. And yet, I have observed it with enough frequency to know that there's something I'm missing.

If you are just talking about contraception, that's a bit reductive.

There is a notable percentage of people who regret having kids, despite initially deciding to have them.

It is not possible to fully anticipate what it's like. For some parents, an unexpected change in circumstances may also change perspectives. E.g. their own parents may fall ill and add to the caretaking burden instead of sharing in it.

Ha! It's more than contraception availability although that certainly is why I qualified my bafflement as being in regards to reasonably intelligent people. It's pretty easy to imagine how this could happen due to temporary or permanent affliction by idiocy.

None of the personal examples I have in mind had circumstances that explain the resentment these men expressed. I think you're right that they simply failed to anticipate how parenthood would be, or maybe they didn't even recognize it as something worth consideration.

This is exactly it. I love my children more than anything, I would die for them. I do regret having children though, *at the moment*. I didn't realise just how very hard it would be. My eldest is autistic though, so for seven years we've doubted ourselves, struggling because of his extreme emotions and meltdowns. And then feeling judged by the entire world because I don't feel as the world prescribes.

Until you've lived that life, it is best not to judge. Just like I couldn't judge how I would personally react to being a parent until I became one.

Btw, my regret fluctuates, and there are periods where I would not change things at all. I hope, with time, those periods grow longer until they're the only periods.

Thank you for this comment. I think your perspective helps me understand one of the examples I had in mind.

> There is a notable percentage of people who regret having kids, despite initially deciding to have them.

I always say that people choose to have kids, they don't choose to have teenagers

Treat your kids as adults when they reach puberty, problem solved. Never act like they are too young for anything. Just explain how the world works and let them figure it out. Just don’t get mad at every stumble along the way. Be there for them if they need you.

I say this unironically. The “Move fast and break things” approach works wonders for the relationship between parents and children.

That assumes that children/teenagers are logical creatures. They're not

You can follow every parenting guide under the sun and still be left with a moody teenager that argues back at everything you tell them

I don't think I implied or assumed that children are logical creatures.

> a moody teenager that argues back at everything you tell them

As an adult, do you like to be "told"?

Ask your kid how he likes to be treated.

You don’t need intelligence to be a good father. Good communication skills, discipline, empathy, patience, humility, clarity and predictability are all traits that don’t require above average intelligence.

Of course! You do, however, require some minimal quantity to use contraception.

It's worth mention that the examples I have in mind also weren't bad fathers. They were just secretly regretful and resentful.

I don't get why the sleep deprivation continues. Seems like eliminating that would make a big difference. I have a six year old son, and since he was four it was perfectly fine for him to do his own thing for a little while if I needed a bit of extra sleep. I could see why you'd resent kids if they were constantly needy, didn't sleep, and you didn't actually enjoy their company. But for kids with typical development, this resentment maybe means that the parents aren't setting the right boundaries past age 3.

>failing at online dating

I think people fall into the trap of thinking things are too good to be true (so they must not be true). This results in abandoned relationships that would have been better than 99% of those from pre-online-dating times.

This has been true for me, anyway. Every time I've entered the online dating scene, I've invariably realized 3 months later that one or two of the women I turned down for second dates were great matches.

I don't understand what you mean by "too good to be true" here. You mistakenly think the women you have good first dates with are fraudulent in some way?

It's that I'm not naturally inclined to accept things/matches that appear ideal on the surface. Though in this case they aren't scams at all.

I don't know how to articulate it, that's just my best shot. I'm baffled by my poor decision-making and assume the author is guilty of the same faulty reasoning.

I'll give anyone a second date if they accept. Maybe not a third, but everyone gets a second chance. It doesn't cost much since I don't do extravagant dates to begin with, so that weeds out those women quickly.

I have two kids. They are very very different in their needs, sleep patterns, self security, and have been since their first days. Parenting is mostly hard for anyone getting serious about it, but i can vary tremendously from you kid personnality, the support system you have, etc... I suspect some parents (usually fathers) don't know it because they do not put in the works (and then give some advices on boundaries). Still, some have "easy" kids in the sense that they are not demanding a lot from the parent, and that can be fine or the sign of a troubled personnality. I completely understand the author here, as this has been also my experience - parenting is unbeleivably hard but _also_ beautiful and _also_ an experience that should change you to the core and make you grow. To me, however hard it can be, it beats the alternative. But I could unserstand that only once I've been through abandonning my former self govern by individualist values and goals to become a new person taking care of someone else, however hard and painful it might have been.

I decided to go ahead and click through, since this looks like it's just an expired certificate. It's a really great piece of creative nonfiction that evoked all sorts of emotions, some of which even managed to be positive.

And I'm going to go with my gut and not give my thoughts on love, and instead simply reflect on the fact that in the early days, there was no "swipe culture" -- you got shown the girl of your dreams, on paper. (In reality, there's looks, social class, and of course, the foundations of geopolitics.)

These are another "Jacob" and another "Felix", not the ones in the post, but there are so many similarities and such a terrible lesson learned that it needs to be written.

The Felix I know is still happy; still going out in the long summer days or camping during the winters, playing minecraft sometimes, discovering that life has yet so much to give. Felix has so many ideas in his head that any given day it's a miracle he finds the strength of spirit to prioritize and keep the focus. People at work like Felix because he only compromises on the right things and never throws anybody under a bus so that he can run because they called from the school.

Felix dances in the mornings, and takes catnaps, and tries to keep away the sadness. Sadness not of his life, but because his Jacob died a month ago the most terrible dead possible, that Jacob caught after his immune system was reduced to shreds by regular sleeplessness caused by his kid's iterative flus, family stress, excess alcohol (caused by immediate and extended family stress), and the never ending procession of viruses the kid kept bringing home. For all that saying that family is so that you don't die alone, Jacob never wanted his family for that he could die surrounded by them, and Felix is pretty sure Jacob would have preferred to die alone rather than suffer so much and give so much suffering to those he loved.

Felix thinks often of the urn of ashes that is all that is left of Jacob, and about how the family Jacob loved has been left with no choice but to forget and to keep going, one feet in front of another, after the husband that did everything was eaten alive by a metastasis. Felix knows in his bones that he will find the time to compose and sing a song for Jacob. It'll probably be called "Sex toys are underrated."

Also, the "D" in this parallel story grew up to become an angel investor and a good friend of Felix. This D and his wife live happily with their cat, and travel the world.

That sounds awful, but also an extremely rare event.

Really nice read!

I would have loved to know more about how the business ended. It could have flown naturally with the rest of the story. Same for D’s journey!

Even if most comments felt like there was envy at Felix’s life I think that’s because we only see the negative aspects of Jacob’s life and only the nice ones of Felix’s. Deep down I know that Felix is a bit lonely on a treadmill trying to keep up an entrepreneurial journey and that he might wake up at 45.

people dont hire ambitious young women because theyre afraid theyll fall in love with them???

The only women I've heard say things like that are very narcissistic and entitled to begin with.

As much as I liked the writing, this part stood out to me too. This woman was the best candidate and was passed over for the opportunity because the author felt attracted to her. At least he acknowledges he was 25 and dumb. But as much as pretty privilege does give people an edge in some places, this was important to remind me in what ways a woman is passed over that probably wouldn't happen to a man. Hire the most qualified candidate period.

Absolute fucking juice, mate. Pure gold. Really nailed that feeling of early 2000s/early 2010s web entrepreneurship of the failed young entrepreneur hahaha.

Gold standard nostalgia.

Reading this thread is really funny if your first name is Felix.

If you can get a cautionary tale on having children out of this article, your powers of interpretation are immense or you didn’t read the article at all…

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” why bother reading the rest of the story

Hot take: dissatisfaction will always find its level.

Also? My dude, check in with "Felix" when you're both 45 and 55. Where is the source of value in a life? There is no right answer but I can tell you from observation that whatever combinations work for people, they are almost always not premised on stasis.

Popular culture, night life, preoccupation with the finest examples (or most trendy) of things like croissants, most especially, drinking drugs and the drive of libido—all of these are ephemeral pleasures.

Here in the Bay Area it's very easy to see the whole spectrum of life-choices and make a survey of the outcomes that results from different investment in career, pleasure, parenting, community, etc.

There's a subtext in writing like this: that what the author really wants, is to be frozen in a moment they regret is behind them; to forever be full of potential and on the cusp: well, it don't work that way I'm afraid, and neither your potential nor your youth nor the twinkle that come from being Young and Bright and Attractive last.

What I can say having made my own survey of outcomes is this: to the extent that your anchor sense of self worth and satisfaction in life on those ephemeral things (or worse, their pale social-media social-politics echos), you're gonna have a Real Bad Time getting older.

That does not mean you need to learn to love the bomb that is your kids. It does mean that you need to have insight and perspective on your own and other's psychology and manage to it.

Lots of traditions and cultures have evolved pretty solid ways for managing this shit. Insight meditation and investing in your community through volunteering and even hobbies are rightly popular. But family and friends (i.e your actual not online social network) are almost irreplaceable.

Stop chasing what was, no matter how eloquently you lament, you're not getting back to it or holding on. The river of aging and accumulating memory and the cummulative consquences of your behavior and decisions are inexorable, as they are for all. Even the rich. The young who are actually 24 just generally don't realize that yet. That's why they are who they are, as they should be.

Incidentally these are things that we all already mostly know.

Consider the mid-life crisis, the white haired success who indulges their wealth chasing the things that comprised their half-remembered often superficial daydreams of decades ago.

That our culture derides these archetypes is a warning signal. There are healthier ways of coming to terms with the passage of time and what is lost through it.

Nice story

I feel like I read a different piece than everyone else?

I didn't interpret any of this piece to be about regretting having kids, or anything else. And sure, there is a sort of glorifying of Felix, but the writer is very aware of that. He points out that in his mind, Felix is forever 25. The most important part of the piece, IMO, is the end:

  I often think about Felix’s freedom.

  But my memory plays tricks on me. I never told you about it being so lonely
  in that apartment that I cried ...there was
  nobody there but me... When I think of that time, it’s a Forever Summer.
  I don’t remember the Winters. I bet they sucked...Cufflinks! Horse Bridles!

  I think the most honest thing we can do for our Felixes is to
  dive further into the fantasy. To flesh out the details of their life.
  Make them concrete.

  When I think about Felix’s partner or children,
  I can’t help but picture a life similar to my own.
  Because he also wanted children. He wanted a partner.
  He wouldn’t have stayed in that neighbourhood.
  And anyways, that place is not the same as it was sixteen years ago.

  Felix probably made choices akin to my own. Made compromises.
  The only alternative I can imagine to compromise, accommodation,
  negotiation is to never allow yourself to love.

  It’s 5:30am now. The sun is beginning to rise.

  M had gone to sleep 3 hours ago and I am all alone.

  Sometimes I sit there and think that I am lucky. So very very lucky.

  I feel it in my weaselly little bones.

This piece is to me, ultimately about loving your life while acknowledging that every decision you make closes off other opportunities, and sometimes you grieve them. All decisions come with a tradeoff, and it's not unfaithful to your life to acknowledge them. You can love your child and not love parenthood itself. You can choose your partner simply because they feel like a better bet and you can see building a life with them, even though someone else more viscerally lit your fire once upon a time. You can feel sorrow at having lost total independence, even though you feel the satisfaction of connection and responsibility. I have conversations like this with friends all the time.

Modern life tries to sell to us that if we're being "authentic", we can have it all and give up nothing. I simply don't think that's true. The truth is that every significant decision closes 100 doors, and refusing to acknowledge that we would have liked to have walked through some of those doors... to me, that's just fear of facing the weight of our choices.

Makes me think of the famous Fig Tree section of Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar": https://www.favoritepoem.org/poems/plath-the-fig-tree/

Jacob, if you see this: it spoke to me, and gave me some peace as I've been ruminating over similar things. Thanks for writing :)

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edit: quote formatting

>>All decisions come with a tradeoff Yes! I've heard it out as "the price for something you really want is something else that you really value".

I'm glad that this piece spoke to you :-) While I don't know exactly what's been on your mind, I keep being surprised by how hard it is to let go of past identities / stop struggling against current reality.

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